Susan E. Allen

Info

Department of Anthropology
Field Service Assistant Professor
Archaeobotany and Palaeoethnobotany
Environmental Archaeology and Ethnoecology

Research

Dr. Allen’s research focuses on the interplay of landscape, settlement, and power and the potential of multi–scalar approaches to illuminate two key shifts in the human past, the transition to agriculture and the emergence of social complexity. Her current work is particularly concerned with examining the role of wetland ecosystems in the transition to farming in the southern Balkans, at the leading edge of the spatial and chronological trajectory of this transition, as well as wetlands’ enduring cultural significance. To this end, she directs the Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project (SANAP), with excavation at the Early Neolithic site of Vashtëmi. Her second research focus is the application of archaeobotanical methods to the investigation of early state formation in the Aegean. As director of archaeobotanical research at Iklaina, a secondary center that was incorporated into the Mycenaean kingdom at Pylos during a period of rapid climate change, she applies archaeobotanical data to illuminate the role of land–use and environmental adaptation as mechanisms for state formation.

QARG Publications

Allen, S. 2011. Water management in Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean. Invited chapter in Hassan, Fekri A. and Vernon L. Scarborough, eds., Water and Humanity, Historical Overview (History of Water and Civilization Book Series). Paris: UNESCO. [invited] , in press.

Allen, S. and Hansen J.M., 2011. The Palaeoethnobotany of Early Helladic Tsoungiza. Chapter 14 in D. Pullen (ed)., Early Bronze Age Village on Tsoungiza Hill. Athens: American School of Classical Studies and Hesperia.